Phototypesetting was a method of setting type, rendered obsolete with the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing software, that uses a photographic process to generate columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper. Typesetters used a machine called a phototypesetter, which would quickly project light through a film negative image of an individual character in a font, through a lens that would magnify or reduce the size of the character onto film, which would collect on a spool in a light-tight canister. The film would then be fed into a processor, a machine that would pull the film through two or three baths of chemicals, where it would emerge ready for paste up.

Phototypesetting machines projected characters onto film for offset printing. This "cold type" technology could be used in office environments where "hot metal" machines (the Mergenthaler Linotype, the Harris Intertype and the Monotype) could not. The use of phototypesetting grew rapidly in the 1960s when software was developed to convert marked up copy, usually typed on paper tape, to the codes that controlled the phototypesetters. The Photon Corporation in Cambridge, Mass. developed equipment based on the Lumitype of Rene Higonnet and Louis Moyroud.Mergenthaler produced the Linofilm using a different design and Monotype produced Monophoto. Other companies followed with products that included Alphatype and Varityper.